VOORHEESVILLE — A portion of the $6 billion Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission line hacked its way through the village of Voorheesville this week, leaving a swath of downed trees in its wake. 

Overseen by an investment of private equity giant Blackstone, the project consists of two five-inch diameter 1,250-megawatt high-voltage transmission cables running about 340 miles from Canada to Queens, carrying enough energy to power a million homes.

Over 100 of the project’s roughly 340 miles are being run on land, underground, largely along railroad rights-of-way in Washington, Saratoga, Schenectady, Albany, and Greene counties, with the remaining mileage located underwater, either in Lake Champlain to the north or the Hudson River to the south.

Locally, CHPE’s underground cables are to run for about 24 miles through the towns of Coeymans, Bethlehem, and New Scotland, as well as the villages of Ravena and Voorheesville, where project work was recently taking place. 

Machines could be seen in the village this past week digging along CSX’s rights-of-way and in the area of the Voorheesville Post Office between its parking lot and the railroad tracks, where a group of trees were felled. 

The Enterprise inquired about the work following concerns from readers about the undertaking. 

“Yes, the project secured a temporary construction easement from the United States Postal Service to work on the post office property,” according Lindsey Jordan from CHPE’s public relations firm, Risa Heller. “The USPS was notified and made aware of the commencement of construction activities.”

The project is scheduled to go into service in May of 2026, Jordan said.

Asked if similar swaths of trees would be taken down, as needed, along the project line, Jordan replied in an email, “The project requires clearing along the route and most of this work will happen in the railroad right of way. There is work that needs to take place on private properties and in those cases either temporary or permanent easements are negotiated prior to work commencing.”

A temporary construction easement could not be found in the Albany County Clerk’s online records look-up; the site lists dozens of easements titled as both a temporary and permanent easement. A request to Jordan, for a copy of the easement, returned the following: “This is a Temporary Construction Easement, and is therefore not filed on record. There is no permanent encumbrance on the property.”